


Impossible

by athena_crikey



Category: Ghost in the Shell
Genre: Episode tie-in, Gen, Rain of Bullets / Barrage, sniping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 15:10:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6709912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athena_crikey/pseuds/athena_crikey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's only one sniper who can make the shot from that distance. S1E25 tie-in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impossible

The cabin door slides open, the low hum of the hydraulics audible only for the instant before the internal seal breaks and the wind slices in, at which point the beating of the blades overhead becomes deafening. Safe with the sun at its back, the helicopter hovers above the city.

The sniping program is already splicing together the signals from three low-orbiting satellites to create a straight line of sight to the target. It zooms in jerkily, struggling with the concurrent demands of managing the helicopter’s piloting systems and streaming and merging the satellite feeds in real time. It is already calculating the required trajectory of the bullet and altering the copter’s course, nudging the nose upwards by two degrees for a level shot. 

The twitchy focusing slows as the feed nears the correct level of magnification. Set right in the centre of the crosshairs is the loading ramp for a small jet sitting on the tarmac outside the Niihama airport’s cargo terminal, its metal body gleaming softly in the sunset. 

There’s a flash of motion from the left and the long-distance rifle twitches by a hair to track it. A man and woman are crossing the cracked cement runway side by side, both in trench coats. The woman is petite with purple hair cut in a sharp bob, the man tall with white hair and cybernetic eyes. The program’s AI scans the woman’s features and gives the green light, releasing the auto-lock on the rifle. Target confirmed: Major Kusanagi.

Saito lets out his breath, and tightens his finger on the trigger.

  
***

_Two Hours Earlier._

He’s woken from a state between sleep and unconsciousness by a beeping in his ear. His head currently feels like someone poured cement into it and let it expand until it split his skull, which is why he doesn’t react at first. 

Then he remembers he has an autistic lock jammed into the back of his neck, and nearly rolls off the bunk. He reaches up to feel its smooth coldness protruding from his spine; still there. 

The beeping stops, to be replaced by the soft click that announces a file being opened. Saito sits up, the bruises that run from his gut to his collarbones all protesting in painful synchronization. By the time he’s halfway to vertical, the Major’s voice is playing in his head. She speaks quickly and curtly, her battlefield orders voice. 

_Saito. I’m hacking the autistic lock through the building’s communication system; it’s a one-way channel, and there isn’t much time._

_Batou and I are the only ones who haven’t been caught. Umibouzu is coming for us tonight, as we try to leave the country. There’s a termination order on me._

_They have only one window: a long range sniping scenario. Their sniper broke his arm in the attack on Section 9. Right now, you’re the only triple A sniper in the country, and they’re out of options._

_They’ll bring you in to take the shot anyway they can. Let them. Take it. If they can’t bring me down cleanly, they’ll do it messily, and that will mean a firestorm of collateral damage. So we’ll let them think they’ve won. This way there’s no firefight beside a tank of jet fuel, or some wet-nosed rookie on the other side of the city twitching and putting a bullet in Batou’s brain._

_Besides, if everyone’s going to think a sniper took me down, it’s going to be the best goddamn sniper._

_You have your orders. Kusanagi out._

The file finishes and closes with a soft click, leaving Saito in the silence of his own skull again. He sighs, very slowly relaxes his muscles to slump back down onto the bunk, and lets his head thump quietly against it.

  
***

Saito doesn’t know how much time passes before they come to pull him out of the cell; the Umibouzu took his watch when they threw him in here, just like they took his gun and his knife and his dogtags. Half-concussed and cut off from the net, his internal clock isn’t a trusty guide.

The long hallway they drag him out into is dark and cold and smells faintly of must – underground, disused. He’s not alone; ahead of him Paz is being pulled along by two guards, his jacket gone, the white of his suit shirt smeared with dirt and blood. There are footsteps behind him: the hard, even tread of combat boots and the slower, heavier steps of men who have taken a few kidney punches. 

His first thought is that the Major was wrong, that she and Batou are down and that there are bloody bodies waiting in bags up ahead to be identified. But the Major is never wrong, and if she was she’d make damn sure there wouldn’t be enough left of her to fit in a bag. He licks his dry lips, and stops bothering with speculation. There’s only one reason to bring them all together; the only question is whether Umibouzu want answers or action. 

They end up in a large bunker with a few metal tables and chairs, all artificially weighted to prevent their use as weapons. The lights overhead have mesh on them, and the door locks from the outside. An interrogation room. They hadn’t bothered to use it when they brought Saito in, had given him his beating in his cell, although it had been the kind of half-assed beating of men doing what was expected of them. They hadn’t tried seriously to extract any information from him. Probably, they knew they wouldn’t get it. Not in time, anyway. 

He’s dragged to one end of the room and held there by a grunt holding a Seburo; Paz, Ishikawa and Borma are lined up on the other side of the room, then kicked to their knees. Three grunts, three Seburos, one behind each kneeling man. Only then does the Commander walk in, wearing sunglasses in an underground compound. Saito doesn’t blink; stupid as it looks, this man brought in more than half of Section 9 in two days. He stops halfway between Saito and the other three members of Section 9, neatly far enough to the side that Saito’s view of his comrades is unobstructed. 

“You’re here to make a choice,” the Commander tells Saito, without preamble. “You can make one shot, end one life. You do that, and no one else dies. You don’t, and the three of them do, now.” He snaps his fingers; the three handguns are raised to point at the backs of Paz, Ishikawa and Borma’s heads. None of them moves. “Then I kill the target, and her partner, and whoever else gets in the way. And then I kill you.” He nods again, and Saito feels the cold press of a handgun’s barrel against his temple on his blind side. 

“Her?” he asks, stiff jawed.

“Major Kusanagi Motoko.”

Saito doesn’t react. The Major, after all, is never wrong. Across from him, however, all three men show their shock in their own tiny way: Borma stiffens, Paz’s hands fist, Ishikawa’s eyes widen and flash to his. 

“You want to put a rifle in my hands?” asks Saito, quietly, turning to stare at the Commander. “Point me at her, and trust your threats to pull the trigger?”

“She will die either way; the only question is how messily. If you have any loyalty to her, then you should give her an easy death. We won’t take her prisoner, but that doesn’t mean we’ll put her down softly. On the other hand, if she’s nothing but an oak leaf to you then make the smart choice and buy your own life for a bullet.” His eyes are hidden by the glasses, but Saito doesn’t have to see them to know he means every word he says. Like the Major, there isn’t an ounce of doubt in his voice or posture. His competence, Saito has already seen. 

“Saito, let these bastards take her out themselves, if they can,” barks Ishikawa, breaking the silence. There’s a bead of sweat running down his temple; it trickles past his cheekbone and disappears into his beard. There’s a tint of command in his voice, just enough that Saito knows he’s afraid Saito might turn. 

“Damned if I’ll be a goddamn hostage.” Paz doesn’t show a trace of doubt, shoulders square and confident.

“You get caught, you lose your vote. We all already forfeited this life. The Major hasn’t.” Borma’s tone conveys no emotion whatsoever; his face is equally bland as he stares straight at Saito. Saito stares back; lets his gaze flicker over all three of them. There is, quite simply, only one way out of this. Maybe that’s just penance for being captured.

“The Major’s last order was for us all to survive. I intend to carry it out.” He turns to the Commander, sees himself reflected in the tinted glasses; in their concave lenses he is short and bulldog-ish, heavy browed and thick lipped. “I’ll take your shot.”

“Saito! That’s not what she meant!” Ishikawa makes to struggle, and is struck on the back of the head. As he slumps back, stunned but not unconscious, another guard steps forward from beside the door; together the two of them manhandle Ishikawa out of the room before he can gather his senses. Borma simply kneels, staring, until he’s dragged to his feet and shoved out. Paz, alone, sets his weight and squares his shoulders.

“Don’t do this, Saito. Don’t you fucking do this.” Paz jams his elbows back into the stomach of the guard about to pistol-whip him, and twists away from a second one. He makes it to within a yard of Saito before they grab him, kicking in his knees and then slamming their guns into his back so that he falls forwards onto his face at Saito’s feet. He looks up, strands of hair falling over his narrowed eyes, mouth tight with fury. “Don’t.”

The guard beside him kicks him in the head, and Paz drops. They drag him out, his body a dead weight. 

Saito turns to the commander, watching him from nearby, arms crossed over his trench coat. “Well?”

  
***

From his vantage point high in the sky he watches the world below, as though from the eye of a hawk. Watches Batou and the Major walk across the tarmac, Batou’s arm around her. He can’t protect her from this.

“First target: Kusanagi Motoko,” comes the commander’s voice, as the rifle comes online. “The committee has given the order to terminate her,” he continues. 

Saito watches the feeds come online, the crosshairs zooming closer and closer. He tracks the movement with microscopic shifts of the rifle, his finger hovering over the trigger. “There’s only one chance. Take her out as she boards the plane.”

They’re utilizing the helicopter’s targeting software, his own autistic lock still in place. No chance to warn her. As though he needed to. Batou slips away to mount the narrow stairs to the tilt-rotor first.

The program’s AI scans the woman’s features and gives the green light, releasing the auto-lock on the rifle. Target confirmed: Major Kusanagi.

Saito lets out his breath, and tightens his finger on the trigger. The laser targeting system dances a red dot up her spine until it reaches her head. 

Saito pulls the trigger. 

There’s no kick-back, and with the helicopter door open, scarcely the rapport of the shot. In fact, there’s hardly any evidence he’s just fired a high-velocity round. 

There is only the image seared into his one good eye, a bright red explosion on the tarmac, and then the stretch of the Major’s body, raincoat fluttering in the breeze. 

“Target neutralized,” he says, stiffly. Below Batou is screaming silently, his form filled with rage and agony. Saito watches as he’s wrestled to the ground by a group of Umibouzu, fighting all the way. 

Then the cabin door slides shut, and all is dark.

  
***

They’re kept locked in single confinement; Saito doesn’t object. Some of the others may have enough mercenary left in them to forget what he’s done, but he doubts it. He’s not sure that he would, either.

He sits day after day in the tiny cell, watching the walls. 

Waiting for the Major.

  
***

A week passes before anything happens, and then it all happens at once. His door is unlocked and a fully-cyberized man in a suit enters, looking over him. “You’re to be released,” he says, with a pinched look as though he objects to his own statement. “Effective immediately.”

“What’s happened?” Saito asks, looking up. 

“The paperwork came through,” answers his visitor, a complete non-answer. Saito stands all the same; freedom is freedom.

He’s escorted through the facility by two guards, buzzed through consecutive doors until he’s standing in an open courtyard facing a final door. He’s given back his clothes and effects, minus the high-powered rifle and three handguns he had been carrying. He’s not surprised; only one of them was legal. His clothes haven’t been washed, and his wallet has a grubby picked-over look; he’s not surprised to find his cards replaced in incorrect order. 

A guard opens the front door for him and stands, glowering, until he steps through into the sunlight beyond. It closes behind him with a deceptively soft sound for the bulk of the metal. 

Saitou steps out into freedom, and knows in the first ten seconds that he must have been the first one to be released. This is because he’s not dead yet. 

He almost takes off; there’s no telling how long it will be until the others are released, but he doubts he’s been given much of a head start. It’s the sight of the teenage girl with the purple bob on the other side of the street that stops him. She’s standing under a long row of maple trees planted alongside the sidewalk, staring at him with red eyes. He glances left and right along the long strip of road, then jogs across.

She looks up at him, her face a bland mask. “Well done,” she says simply, standing with the Major’s confidence. 

Saito inclines his head. Praise is rare from the Major, in this case he has earned it without a doubt. He takes a deep breath, for a moment savouring the clean, fresh air. It wasn’t his first time in incarceration, nor his longest, but the relief of release runs deep. “Did you get us out?” 

She looks back the way to the prison, from here just a long cinderblock wall twelve feet high with one steel door set in the centre. 

“Of course,” she says, flatly. As though he hadn’t needed to have asked; Saito supposes it’s true. 

On the other side of the road the prison door slides open and Ishikawa, Paz and Borma come into sight in the open doorway; Ishikawa is first out the door. He looks around, stretching his arms, then catches sight of them and freezes. He slowly lowers his arms, takes a step forward, and jerks back as a passing truck blares its horn at him. Behind him, Paz and Borma are staring. 

“I think I’ll be off now,” she says, as though she weren’t supposed to be dead, as though he wasn’t the one supposed to have killed her. Easily as if this were Section 9, and she was going down to the gym. “I’ve work to do.”

Saito glances down at her. “What about us?”

“Do as you please; Section 9 is officially disbanded.”

“Major –”

She steps back into the underbrush and is gone, thermo-optic camouflage erasing her presence entirely. He could hack his hawkeye into a satellite with infrared cameras, but he doesn’t need to to know that she’s already gone. She’ll come back when it suits her, and not before. 

Saito hears a barrage of heavy steps and turns back to see the three members of Section 9 crossing the road. They crowd in on him; he makes no move to evade them. “Was that…?” asks Ishikawa, looking from him to the greenery behind him. 

“I only take orders from one person,” confirms Saito. 

Saito feels the tension drain out of them, shock fading to acceptance. The Major doesn’t know the meaning of the word impossible, after all. The five of them turn back to watch the prison, Ishikawa running a hand through his thick hair. “What did she say?”

Saito shrugs. “Our futures are up to us.”

They watch as Batou is released. He spots them immediately. He strides straight out into the road without concern for traffic, ignoring the squeal of tires. His movements are sharp, heavy, full of menace and the prelude to violence. He comes straight at Saito.

Ishikawa steps between them. 

“Out of my way,” snarls Batou, making to shove Ishikawa’s shoulder. Borma grabs his wrist, shifting his weight to hold him firmly.

“She’s not dead, Batou. She was here, just now,” says Ishikawa, voice low and intense.

“The hell’re you talking about? She was shot dead – this _bastard_ shot her dead.”

“I acted under orders,” says Saito, calmly. “Hers. As always.”

“She needed to be dead to be safe. You _know_ they’d never have stopped until she was,” continues Ishikawa. Batou growls, jaw working, but gradually his breathing slows. 

Saito crosses his arms, catching Batou’s cybernetic eyes and holding his stare steady. “She said what we do now is up to us.”

Batou grunts, twisting his arm to free his grip from Borma’s. “Of course it isn’t,” he says eventually, looking around. They stand watching him, waiting. Overhead, the maple leaves dance in a soft breeze, their rustling filling the air. 

“We have to finish what we started.” 

END


End file.
